Yesterday (Tuesday), while Brian Cowen and Paul Murphy met in London, Richard Haass met people from local parties to talk about the prospects for politics in the north. As you will gather from his interviews in today's media, the prospects are beginning to look like Dr Johnson's observation about the widower who remarried immediately after the death of a wife he didn't get on with: 'the triumph of hope over experience'.
Let's try to put matters in perspective. Dr Haass is director of policy planning staff at the US State Department with the rank of ambassador. He is at present on a 'swing through Europe'. Isn't that what Americans call it? People here have a worm's eye view of the world so only they could imagine he flew across the Atlantic specifically to talk about the north, though he has actually made such a foolhardy trip in his time.
No. If you'd listened to him being interviewed on BBC Radio 4 on Monday you'd have heard him say he was in Europe to examine the fraught state of relations between his government and Europe. Neither he nor the interviewer mentioned the north. It was all about the proposed EU constitution, expansion of the EU and the role of the UN. All of which you'd expect, because the north is nowhere on anyone's agenda except here. So it's quite decent of Dr Haass to spend 24 hours here, especially since he's bowing out and his adviser on the north, Meghan O'Sullivan, has already gone. Will Dr Haass's successor be bothered? Will anyone?
The truth is politics here have shut down because Tony Blair's attempt last October to bounce the republican movement into declaring itself redundant collapsed in ignominy on May day. Mr Blair's reckless attempt was his response to the refusal of unionists to continue to work the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement. Not for the first time he mistakenly bolstered David Trimble's demands.
If Mr. Blair learned anything from experience it should be that the republican leadership likes to come at big issues crabwise and will only move when they're good and ready, which is obviously not yet. At the moment both governments are doing what rescue teams advise after accidents at sea. They're clinging to the wreckage. Yesterday Mr Cowen and Mr Murphy were hefting bits of the wreckage otherwise known as the Joint Declaration, to see if they could select anything substantial to hang onto for any length of time. The answer is, not a lot.
Since we've reached this state of affairs because Mr Blair danced to David Trimble's tune, it's time to give some sweeties to republicans, or sops as unionists call them. The trouble is the sweetie paper was designed to be attractive to Mr Trimble. He'll only let them unwrap it when the IRA jump through certain Orange hoops he's made.
The other stuff on human rights and justice depends on agreement between the parties and is predicated on the existence of an administration in the north. There won't be one for the foreseeable future and besides, the parties will never agree. Anti-agreement unionists have already begun to pick the Joint Declaration to pieces with the full endorsement of Mr Trimble, who has set up four committees in his party to help them. Remember the declaration was to be presented on a 'take it or leave it' basis after six months negotiation?
What does all this mean? It's very straightforward. What the Taoiseach referred to as 'all the nonsense' of Mr Trimble repeatedly pulling down the agreement's institutions over the last five years has sent out a very clear message and it's this – unionists prefer political instability rather than to try to find a working arrangement with the representatives of nationalism. Opinion polls this week reinforce that message strongly. Other polls show that unionists prefer direct rule to partnership. Whereas the British government is desperate to hand as many powers as they can to people in the north and turn them to look towards Dublin, unionists are saying, 'We don't want to govern ourselves if we have to do it with these people.'
Yet in an interview with the Sunday Business Post at the weekend Mr Trimble had the nerve to say the question people here should be asking is, 'How can we make Northern Ireland work for all its citizens?' Can anyone offer an example of anything he has done as First Minister to act in any way other than as leader of the UUP? On the contrary, this is an unremittingly partisan politician who has never given the slightest indication that he understands the concept of acting on behalf of all citizens. His continual quest for political advantage over republicans has guaranteed permanent instability. Who's that good for?
